Turkish Delight is a 1973 Dutch erotic romantic drama film directed by Paul Verhoeven from a screenplay by Gerard Soeteman, based on the 1969 novel Turks Fruit by Jan Wolkers. It is a love story of an artist and a young woman, starring Rutger Hauer in his film debut and Monique van de Ven.
Turkish Delight is the most successful film in the history of Dutch cinema. The film was a massive success at the Dutch box office; according to Alle Record, 3,338,000 people saw the film, while the Netherlands Film Festival puts it at 3.5 million, corresponding to about 26% of the population of the Netherlands at the time. In 1973 it was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film and in 1999, it received a special Golden Calf Award for Best Dutch Film of the Century. It was entered into the Canon of Dutch Cinema in 2007. In 2005, it was adapted into a musical, starring Antonie Kamerling and Jelka van Houten.